Undistracted Academics

I’d say that distraction free writing tools are fantastic, especially for short creative writing pieces, however, for academic writing, distraction free writing tools make it bit harder. While the initial idea of distraction free writing spaces is good, as it eliminates distractions and allows the writer to focus on the writing itself, the distraction free tool is not conducive to writing a formal paper.

Many formal papers that are written typically include outside sources, which is not compatible with the fullscreen distraction free writing tool. The distraction free aspect of the tool becomes practically useless when, to get to the sources that one needs to quote or source, one would have to leave the distraction free zone to do that. If one is constantly leaving the distraction free zone, is the person truly writing in a distraction free environment?

The distraction free writing tool does have one benefit when it comes to academic writing, and that is the fact that the distraction free tools are generally free. With the tools being free, that means that if someone did not have a Microsoft Word Document application, or the equivalent, on his or her own computer, he or she could use the distraction free writing tool as a way to write his or her essay; the distraction free writing tool also allows the user to get the word count as they are writing, which is another benefit.

Overall, I did not find the distraction free writing tool bad to use, I just thought the purpose of the writing tool was destroyed by the fact that, unless one had memorized the sources and quotation or wrote them down beforehand, one would have to continuously switch between the tool and source that was being used. I would still recommend the distraction free writing tool to people because it is still a great way to write without all the distractions that come with regular writing programs.